On this Day in Other Sources.

On the 16th February 1505, Parliament ratified “the creation and making of the baronys of new create and maid within the Kings Earldom of Stratherne, within thir thre yeris last bipast, nd relaxit the said baronyis and landis annexit to thaim, fra all service aucht therof in the Stewart Courts of the Kings Earldom of Stratherne, and will that the said seruice be paid in the Kings sheriff court of Perth, in all tymes to cum.”1

1 Act. Parl. II. 267.

The Queen, shutting herself up, in a close apartment, within Edinburgh castle, without light, or air, feeling “a world of wo and sorrow,” soon endangered her health, and would have very soon brought her life into hazard, if her physicians had not represented those circumstances of danger to the privy council, who advised her to retire into the country, for a time. The Queen saw the fitness of this advice, which suggested to the forger of Murray’s journal, to misrepresent the fact, in the following manner: “They [the Queen and Bothwell] on the 21st of February 1567, passed together to Seaton; and there passed their time, merryly, together, to the 10th of March, when Le Croc, the French ambassador, persuaded her to return to Edinburgh. 10th of March they [the Queen and Bothwell] returned to Edinburgh, by persuasion of Le Croc, where they remained till the 24th of the same month; earnestly trying the upsetting of the placards; but, never a word of the King’s murder.” – Thus much then, of the slander of Buchanan, which only evinces the odious guilt of Murray’s faction.

Let us, however, collate with that slander a dispatch from Sir William Drury, from Berwick of the 17th of February 1567, to Secretary Cecil, on the same subject. Drury had been informed, that the Queen of Scotland was come, this “night to Dunbar: She this last night [the 16th of February] lay at the Lord Seaton’s accompanied, by Argyle, Huntley, Bothwell, [he was high sheriff of this shire] Arbroath, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Lords Fleming, and Livingston, with the secretary, who followed, amounting to a hundred people.” [On the 23d of February, Secretary Maitland wrote, from Seaton, to Cecil, a letter of recommendation, and compliment: But, not a word of the murder.]

We thus see, that the Queen, with her court, consisting of a hundred people, left Edinburgh castle, and retired to the fine seat of Lord Seaton, on the 16th of February 1567:..

Feb. 16. [1598] – It was now six years since the tragic death of the Earl of Moray, and yet his corpse lay unburied. So also did that of Lord Maxwell, killed in a conflict with the Johnstons in December 1593.

Stigmatising this as an abuse that ‘of late has croppin in,’ and in order to prevent the example from being followed, the king and Council issued an order to the respective relatives of the two noblemen that they have the bodies buried in their ordinary places of sepulture within twenty days, under pain of rebellion. – P. C. R

The more opulent class of burgesses, constituting the merchant rank, had, in Glasgow and other considerable burghs, enjoyed for a long time a monopoly of influence and power, and they viewed with distrust the growing importance of the artisan burgesses or craftsmen. These, on the other hand, rising as they now rapidly were to wealth and importance, viewed with jealousy the position of the merchants, and their attempts to exclude them not merely from a participation in municipal government, but even from those mercantile adventures which were becoming such sources of wealth to the enterprising trader. The parties were ultimately brought together by friendly mediation, and an arbitration was entered into which, in 1605, resulted in the well-known decree called the Letter of Guildry, which was ratified by the magistrates and subsequently confirmed by the king and parliament. By this important deed the Dean of Guild Court was established, and its jurisdiction defined; the relative rights of the merchants and craftsmen were finally adjusted; and, as expressed in a minute of the town council in 1605, it was settled that there was to be no more at any “muster, weapon-shawing or other lawful assembly, any question strife or debate betwixt merchant and craftsman for prerogative or priority, but they and every one of them, as one body of the commonweill shall rank and place themselves together but [without] distinction as they shall happen to fall in rank.”1